Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

schedule since Ambassador Hollis’ funeral. Technically, my
schedule is wide open after this.” She paused, letting the ramifications sink
in. “Tell me Red isn’t going to make a run for the artifact.”
    “I can’t lie.”
    Sitting on the desk, Mercy swore.
“You’re okay with her breaking a UN edict?”
    “When compared to saving the lives
of billions of people? Yes.”
    “We’ll all be arrested.”
    “Probably, but not before we
achieve our goals. Z has this timed to the second.”
    Her mother had known about this
possibility for months, and she had probably arranged things to spend as much
time as possible with her oldest daughter. “If we don’t succeed, I won’t make
it back. That’s why Mom is crying.”
    “We might be gone for several years
even if we do reach the alien artifact. Are you still in?”
    This landing would unlock untold
technological marvels. More importantly, her father had recommended her, and
she didn’t want to disappoint him. “Yes.”
    “Good.” Then Yvette told her things
about the artifact that only a handful of humans had ever heard. After that,
there was no going back.
    That afternoon, Mercy put her
affairs in order. As with each member of the conspiracy, she wrote a letter
claiming full responsibility for her own actions, asserting that her friends
and family knew nothing of her plans.

Chapter 3 – Guardian Angels on the Moon
     
    At lunar Mission Control, while most scientists were
toasting the success of the four-engine test, the media spokesperson, Professor
Nena Horvath, took over. The platinum blonde with her soft, Dutch accent was
Red’s aunt and surrogate mother. Her sole goal had been for the Ascension team to reach the artifact without anyone noticing or interfering. What the
former beauty queen couldn’t accomplish with charm, she managed with a loyal
cadre of armed personnel from the now-defunct Sirius Academy. With help from
the security teams on the orbiting construction platform that had launched Ascension on its maiden voyage, that part turned out to be trivial.
    Stopping the fallout afterward
would be difficult.
    “Deploy defensive-missile
batteries. Bring up the Blasteroids tracking program,” Horvath ordered. Alarms
sounded throughout the base.
    The moment she saw the prototype disappear
from radar, Professor Horvath reset the mission clock. She’d seen the Iranian
contingency plan, wherein a single push of a button triggered five days of
automated bombardment. They weren’t the only players. NASA’s database had held
a catalogue of over twenty thousand space objects to avoid. Sirius Academy had added to the list and filtered it. The program on her screen tracked every
known satellite and piece of space debris large enough to launch a weapon of
mass destruction—over six thousand potential threats.
    They were in the hands of the
angels now, the three Fortune Aerospace shuttles. Their positions after the
test were no accident. “ Cherub , you support the L1 platform. Ophan ,
fly cover on our moon base. Seraph , stand by to rescue survivors from Ascension .”
    Over Academy channels her right-arm
man at L1, Lieutenant Alistair, asked, “I’m watching on the telescopes. Where’s
your fourth antimissile battery?”
    “Hydraulics are frozen,” Horvath replied
calmly.
    “Sabotage?”
    “No
eyes or ears yet.”
    “You’ll
need every missile. Should I send you Cherub ?”
    “Negative.
That would take hours. I just dispatched a repair crew. How are your defenses?”
    “ I’ve
already sent the civilians to the life pods. The rest of us have on vac suits,
but that’s just a precaution. All of our
industrial cutting lasers have been upgraded to military strength. We can take
out any missile that gets within twenty klicks. Outside that range, we have the
zap guns.”
    High-speed processor chips
manufactured by Mori Electronics in the last seven years had an intentional
defect. A chip that received a certain signal would melt itself down.